Menu

Corona conviction left more questions than answers

While Migrante International and overseas Filipinos worldwide view Corona’s conviction as a positive political undertaking, it has left more questions than answers.

Migrante International supported the impeachment complaint against Chief Justice Renato Corona on grounds that he is a“stumbling block” in the Filipino people’s demand to hold former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo accountable for all her crimes. However, it is unfortunate that Corona was not convicted for his association with Arroyo. Instead, prosecution charges against him appeared to have deliberately downplayed the issues against the former president and thus allowed her to conceal behind all the mud-slinging and intrigue focused solely on Corona and his family.

It therefore leads to question if indeed the Aquino-LP-Akbayan ruling clique would go the next step and once and for all act on the people’s demands to convict and jail Arroyo. It also does not escape our attention that most of the 188 + 1 congressmen who signed the impeachment complaint against Corona were the ones who quashed previous impeachment complaints against former president Arroyo.

Migrante International also questions the Aquino administration’s sincerity in the pledge for truth and accountability in government when Aquino himself brushed aside Corona’s challenge to sign a waiver allowing for the disclosure of his bank accounts.

Ironically, Aquino himself promised to sign a waiver to disclose his bank accounts during his presidential bid in 2010. He himself recognized public demand for transparency in government and capitalized on that very same clamor to advance his candidacy. This time around, Aquino failed to take the lead in this noble endeavor and only proved his double standards and hypocrisy.

Migrante International also warns against an imminent Aquino-dominated Supreme Court. What the Corona impeachment had exemplified was truly magnificent to behold – a grand gesture of the Aquino-LP-Akbayan ruling clique displaying extraordinary political will and skill that mobilized the bureaucracy and even some private machinery in the quest to demonize Corona.

In the wake of Corona’s conviction, we call for vigilance against an Aquino-led Supreme Court. Corona’s conviction should not translate to Aquino and his cohorts’ free reign over the Supreme Court, the eradication of checks-and-balances in government and, in effect, the revoking of pro-people rulings in favor of the KKK (kaibigan, kaklase, kabarilan), big businesses and foreign interests.

Migrante International challenges the next Supreme Court to act with haste on the distribution of Hacienda Luisita lands, the plunder and human rights cases filed against Arroyo and other government officials and other pending cases against unconstitutional, anomalous and one-sided projects, treaties, legislation and policies.

Indeed, Corona’s conviction had set for the Filipino people higher standards and demands for those in government and especially for Aquino not only in the fight against corruption. The Filipino people now pose a strong challenge, a potent test if the same political displayed by Aquino and his allies in the Corona impeachment will be used to address the people’s legitimate and democratic demands for jobs, wages, land, social services and human rights.

Should the Aquino administration fail to address these, no milestones would have been truly achieved. Corona’s conviction would only be pure vendetta – and the ruling clique’s perseverance of a status quo from which, not the people, but only the Aquino-LP-Akbayan ruling clique would stand to benefit.###